Still trying to get a regular schedule in place for posting the weekly blog. I am thinking Friday afternoons, but that may shift as it becomes a bigger part of my routine. So please bear with me, and know it is our intention to keep this blog fresh and consistent. I encourage all of you to explore the RSS Feed tabs if you are interested in being notified of posts and comments through your email inbox. Enough logistics. Let’s shift to the great inspirer (and also disappointer), Psyche.

Coppin and Nelson (2005) summarize psyche as “the great repository of ideas, images, emotions, urges, and desires that appear in the world, whether its source is personal or collective, conscious or unconscious” (p. 5). Psyche includes the archetypes, and their expression through symbol and myth, that exist within the collective unconscious. It is the “capital S” knowing Self of our unconscious that seeks to guide our “lower case” ego selves in our process of individuation. Dreams are the stuff of psyche reaching out to us. One of its most amazing qualities is that psyche is not bound by the time-space continuum that we, as humans, must serve. Instead, it has the uncanny and precocious ability to pre-date us, exist without us, and, at the same time, be co-constructed in partnership with us. Synchronicity is the expression of this impossible simultaneity.

We often forget that psyche is not only meant to help us in our personal, ego-oriented individuation. Instead, psyche exists as a potentially healing, guiding force for the collective. Therefore, we must also be in service to psyche. If we nurture psyche, it may not only help us along through our personal relationship of self to Self, but also help the collective energy of our community. It is a true partnership and relationship. The more open we become, the more open it becomes.

Relationship to psyche is at the root of our psychological work from a Jungian perspective. I particularly love a description of this relationship provided by Coppin and Nelson (2005). They write:

Psychological life is what Socrates called piety and what we have described as reverence toward all living things, including the living psyche in its many forms. Psychological life is devoted to continual inquiry, relishing the pursuit of wisdom more than the possession of it. It is the willingness to learn from everyone and everything by reflecting on others’ ideas without defensiveness. It is the ability to be deeply moved by what one sees, hears, and feels, accepting the full impact of living in complex emotional bodies. It is tolerating periods of personal doubt and confusion created by meaningful engagement with other perspectives. It is looking past the surface of things to their interior depths and their transcendent source. Finally, it is holding ideas, images, and beliefs lightly so that one can witness and learn from their inherent playfulness. In other words, once one declares that psyche is real, one grows increasingly aware of the actual complexity and fluidity of lived experience. (p. 148)

Let’s not forget the playfulness over the coming week. Relationship is not just hard work. It should also be fun, playful, and full of joy.